O - Outcast

Outcast. Banished. Transported.

Not all our ancestors emigrated of their own free will. Some were driven out of their homes, away from all they knew to escape religious or racial persecution. Others found themselves on the wrong side of the law and took steps to not get caught, to leave before justice caught up with them. We all know about the thousands transported from their home country (not just Britain) as convicts or indentured servants to serve their time in far flung colonies.

There are a few examples of such people amongst the branches of my tree, and in my daughter’s paternal tree.

Huguenots, driven out of Belgium and France to make new lives in England in the 1500s.

Petty criminals tried and sentenced to transportation.

Jacobite supporters, living in exile in France after the 1715 and 1745 uprising. (Ironically in the area from where the Huguenots had fled centuries earlier).

The events in my tree all occurred more than 100 years ago, but for some of us these events are much more recent. The result of war and other conflicts across the world. (Think Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, even WW2.)

“We don’t know how lucky we are, mate.

We don’t know how LUCKY we are.”

Fred Dagg.